Goodness has nothing to do with it
by Argentine Rose
Summary: Javert singularly fails to make a positive difference, and the limitations of goodness are revealed to a young La Magnon.
1. Chapter 1

"_If it requires a uniform it's a useless endeavour"_

_George Carlin._

She can hear them coming down the street soon enough to have time to stash the gear. As if the lockstep tramp of heavy boots and the dragging of a scabbard across the cobbles aren't enough of a giveaway round her 'ends', she can make out the voice of the pock marked Sergeant, clear as the bells for Sunday Mass, saying "It's the house by the steps, Guv!"

He's never been able to keep his voice down, that one, still imagines he's bawling out cavalry recruits for the Emperor.

He's answered by a terse, infuriated rumble which she cannot rearrange into words, even with her ear pressed to the window. Still, she recognises the timbre of the voice. So now she not only knows that _they_ are coming, but exactly who _they_ are.

"Silly beggars!" she says under her breathe, the habit of not swearing in front of the children so ingrained that she now seldom curses even when they're not in the room, even when she's only talking to herself.

Wildly, for a moment, she considers shimmying out the back window – until she remembers that she's lodging on the third floor now, having quite literally gone up in the world. And she's got the kids. And the gear. Best to play it cool, play it brazen.

So she smoothes down her clothes and her hair and does what she needs to do, reflecting that she is smarter than any one of them, time and again she is.

Still, when she hears the knock, three raps of the lead tip of a cane against the door, she flinches. No matter how many occasions she's heard an official knock at the door since she was a child it still makes her shiver, every, every time.

"La Magnon!"

She can feel a film of sweat rise up like ground water from the skin between her shoulder blades and threaten to seep through the silk of her peignoir. For the fraction of an instant her hand recoils from the door handle, as if she fears touching it might exposes her to some unspeakable disease.

"Marie Magnon!" that deep, terse rumble again like the first crack of thunder as a storm kicks off.

"_Gentle Jesus how I hate him!"_ Magnon screams inwardly. Outwardly she only sucks her teeth and kicks the door before drawing back the latch and opening just wide enough to stick her head out, glaring.

"Monsieur L'inspecteur" she says, feigning neither surprise nor politeness.

"May I?" he says, gesturing past her into the flat, as coolly civil as if he has just suggested entering an acquaintance's smoking room. The shit.

"You can show me the warrant or – "

"Don't need a warrant for a little chat Marie, you know that. So let's be friends, civilised like, yeah?" says the Pock Marks, whose name La Magnon now recalls as Minot. He's leaning against the wall of the stairwell. Behind him loiters a young officer with dreadful spots who doesn't really seem to know where to look. Magnon remembers with a jolt that she is still in her peignoir and nightgown, with curl rags in her hair.

"However, I _do_ happen to have a warrant . . . Now, I appreciate that this is an early call, but we servants of the Law have much to accomplish in a day so, if it pleases you . . . "

La Magnon opens the door and gestures for the men to follows her as if she's conceding defeat.

"_She's_ not here."

"Ah, Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre! What a shame! However, it is not La Belle Anglaise that I am here to see, La Magnon, but you."

"I cannot imagine why," she hisses

"Never mind what you can imagine," Javert says, gesturing for his officers to follow him into the apartment. "In you come lads!"

She follows the three men who are taking themselves and their muddy boots into her sitting room. The film of sweat between her shoulders has by now coalesced into droplets which, in their turn, merge into an icy rivulet which makes its was unpleasantly down her spine.

Magnon leans against the corridor wall, opposite the sitting room door when the three men are searching through her belongs in a manner made completely merciless by its calm efficiency. Her arms are folded across her stomach and she's pouting in a pantomime of insolence and affronted dignity, but this is mostly to hide her panicky mental running commentary on their hunt _hot, hotter, hottest. Freezing_! as if it were a children's game.

Every so often she fires off a barb or complaint at one or other of the officers. Javert answers the sallies aimed at him with neutral politeness, refusing to acknowledge her hostility, countering with questions of his own. They are courteously phrased, but oddly tangential to what she images he's come for. Not at all the questions she is expecting – or the ones she herself would have asked, were she the one asking the questions. Minot says nothing. He keeps his back to her and his head down whenever possible. He is clearly most uncomfortable and she relishes that. She can tell that he at least has realised that he's unwelcome in her home not just in a general way, as a policeman, but specifically, as an individual. The youngster looks affronted, but says nothing, He has clearly been told before hand _'not to engage with the suspect'. _He isn't entirely successful in this. Magnon notices that he is persistently stealing glances at her chest – it's cold in the flat for all its summer and the silk of her peignoir is thin.

She catches his eye, tilts back he chin and snaps "You wanna takes notes on that or something, for when you get back to the _henhouse_?"

Javert spins round at this, "For fucksake Rouselle, stop looking at Mademoiselle's tits!"

"Guv?"

"She's not enjoying you watching, I'm not enjoying watching you watching and you won't be enjoying anything ever again if you don't buck your ideas up sharpish! Now then, we're done in here. Someone go search her bedroom and Miss's bedroom – "

The young man makes as if to go.

"Not you! You – " he says, gesturing to Minot, "You do Miss's, I'll do Magnon's. Rouselle, search the kitchen – you'll be safe in there unless La Magnon has particularly comely mice!"

"You're not going in my bedroom, you rat! You can't"

"Yes I can!" Javert snaps, striding past her. He stops, turns, looks at her. "That's a very nice dressing gown Magnon, good silk . . . "

"It's fourth hand. I didn't _steal_ it if that's what you mean!"

"No, I was just thinking that if you'd followed my advice you might have been able to make your own"

With that said, mildly enough, he heads off down the corridor and Magnon is not able to stop herself snapping "Oh fuck off you twat" as she follows him, following this up with guesses as to Javert's parentage, the likely occupation of his mother and the recreational activities that he and his men probably engaged in with their sisters and/or horses. These imprecations trail behind Javert as ineffectual and incidental as seagulls in the wake of a fishing boat. Gently but decisively he thrusts open the bedroom door and then stood peering into the room looking rather surprised

Two little boys stare at him wide eyed and startled, still tousle haired and stunned from sleep, having been woken by the commotion Magnon had caused in the corridor. The littlest starts to cry, more it seems out of shock than genuine fear.

Magnon barges past Javert and pulls the little boy to her, railing at the policeman as she does so; "Now look what you done, you monster! You've no reason to be here, I've done nothing wrong! What the fuck is wrong with you? God in Heaven, why can't you just leave me alone? I hate the sight of you!"

Javert's face twitches slightly at this, although he carries on searching the room. In a voice shaking slightly with what could be anger, but could simply be exasperation, he says "Oh come now Magnon, please do not expect me to believe that those children are not accustomed to strange men bursting into this place at all hours. Cannot you just tell them I'm St Nicholas's nasty brother or something?"

"You're a bloody swine!"

"I'll be done in a moment anyway"

"You're a useless bloody swine! You come in here, upset me, upset my children – and for what? You haven't found anything, have you? And why, because you're bloody useless – and you always bloody have been, you know that!"

For a moment Magnon thinks that she has succeeded in chastening the inspector but then he responds with a cold, surgical precision, "I saw your sister the other day Marie – little Marthe. She's very well"

Magnon shivers. Putting an arm around each of the children she drags them from the room. "Breakfast children – now!"

Later, when she has the boys settled with their bowls of milk, the three officers regroup in her kitchen. They don't speak, only nod to each other in a way which Magnon might assume was loaded with significance if she wasn't sure they had found nothing. As things stand, she assumes their silence is down to embarrassment.

"Get _everything_ you came for did you? I trust it was a _useful_ visit?"

"As it happens, yes. I might come back soon though"

"When"

"Je reviendrai à Pâques! Mironton, mironton, mirontaine! Je reviendrai à Pâques, ou à la Trinité" Javert sings softy, seemingly caught in an irreconcilable impasse between the desire to create a genuine air of mystery and a deeper set, more instinctive impulse to take the piss, to annoy.

Magnon curls her lip and gazes at him with insolent contempt, but unexpectedly the two little boys titter shyly and sleepily. Equally unexpectedly, Javert looks down at them, tips his top hat like a mountebank at a street carnival, and winks. However, when he raises his eyes back to Magnon they are as hard and full of malign intent as any criminal in the district has ever seen them, holding nothing for her but aversion. Without saying a word more he sweeps out with his officers at his back.

It's only later in the day, when she has sent the children out on errands and she's checking over all the gear she'd hidden that Magnon admits to herself that she isn't feeling as smug about the morning's events as she's hoped – there's not many people who call old Javert a fucking bastard with no comeback, there's not many people who have their gaffs searched by three officers only for them to come away with nothing. But still, she isn't happy – the more she thinks about it, the more Javert's odd questions – the ones about La Petite Jondrette, for example – bother her. And the mention of her sister too.

As she packs away the silver, the clothes, the guns which she has hidden safely like a good fence, Magnon admits that she is trembling.

Two things are for certain. Firstly, if there is one human creature upon the face of God's earththat she would be happy never to see again until the day of her death it is Monsieur Javert. Secondly, if he ever mentions Marthe to her again, she will slap his face for im, even if it means spending the rest of her days in Saint Lazare.


	2. Chapter 2

**Some years earlier . . . **

On any given night in the Faubourg St-Marcel the police post on the rue de Pontoise is the eye of a hurricane. On the night of Mardi Gras it is this and something else again – Pandemonium in the original, uncorrupted sense in which Milton might has used it. Wild, howling, desolate, swarming with devils - or, at least, with the damned.

In the middle of this fine Shrove Tuesday eve Inspector Javert strides into the police post, slamming the door behind him as is his custom – a gesture which fails to prevent a squall of spring rain blowing in behind him, newly soaking the already muddied floor.

He is assailed by a scene which in a more sanguine moment he would describe as "Charenton by way of Eylau – with a dash of_ The Raft of the Medusa_". As things stand, he is so taken aback by the transformation of what had been a calm, well ordered sanctuary of due process and efficiency when he had left it that morning, he is only able to whistle out a long "Oh shit"

To his left a mixed party of students and grisettes, between them more sheets to the wind than the fleet of Lord Nelson, are belting out a rousing, tuneless chorus of Aupres De Ma Blonde with lyrics more obscene than any version Javert has heard previously. Given that he has spent most of his life shuttling between the police, the prison service and the army, he acknowledges that, in a perverse way, they've achieved something fairly spectacular

One of the students is being violently sick in the corner, whimpering in a posh, ineffectual sort of way. Sat next to him, completely oblivious to the effluvia washing over his shoes, a black man of gigantic stature weeps noisily into a bottle of eau d'aff"

'_Oh, no'_, Javert thinks, _'not him. Again.'_

The spectacle offered by the rest of the post is no less edifying. Every conceivable space – and some inconceivable ones – is packed with pickpockets, whores, drunks, urchins, miscellaneous n'er-do-wells of every age, sex and complexion and what looks like, to Javert's practised eye, the aftermath of a miniature riots in a far corner, complete with an overturned desk, a sergeant de ville with a bloody nose, and a large man in a soiled smock shouting "Long live the Emperor!".

Greatcoated inspectors and sergeants de ville carrying sabres rush hither and thither – but nowhere near enough of them to catalogue, let alone contain, this madness. He can see his colleague, Fortin, unsuccessfully trying to break up a catfight between a ragpicker and a young prostitute. Two filthy Gamins are playing a noisy knuckle slapping game to pass the time. A Romany girl is wending her way around the room rather daintily with a basket of 'lucky' heather. She pauses in front of another girl of about her own age who is sat, prim, cold and self contained in a corner who gives her a look so flinty that Javert is almost admiring of it.

Amidst all this a little child, no more than four, is sat in the corner, crying plaintively again and again "Sara! Sara!"

"Dab?" comes a voice at Javert's shoulder.

He turns to see one of his sergeants, Pontellier.

"How long's it been like this/"

"Since about six, or so I've been told, Sir. I only came on an hour ago"

"This bad the whole time?"

"Well, somewhere on a scale from unbearable to Dante's Inferno . . . Don't think me impertinent, but what are you doing in? It's meant to be your day off"

"Well, I started reading a new novel – it was shit. Went to call on Nan – she was out. Went for a walk – ended up watching some rats frisking on a garbage heap. Then it started to rain so I thought 'sod it' and came in here."

"You're – "

"Insane? Yes, so they tell me and so I am beginning to believe. I've never really got the knack of days off – just as well for you lot!"

"Yes, glad you're here . . . " Pontellier trails off and the two men survey the scene before them like a Sultan of old and his Grand Vizier, contemplating the ruins of their empire.

Javert is stirred from his reverie when he sees the slight, blond haired figure of another of his sergeants, Jolivet, affix a crudely written sign to the door of his office, the ink still wet and glistening. It reads, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here!"

"Right", Javert growls, twirling his cane in a gesture of resolution, "to work!"


	3. Chapter 3

"You ought to have taken that lucky heather you know"

A sharp faced girl, owner of the basilisk glare which Javert had admired only moments before, turns and sees the moon face of a middle aged man, much the worse for drink, looking down at her with hazy benignity

"You think? Why don't you just take a look at her, buster? Really take a look at her, and tell me if she looks _lucky _to you!"

The drunk looks confused and rocks back on his heels, letting the girl return to her thoughts. She glances round the chaos in the police post, narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw in frustration. She should not be here. Really, she should go home.

She doesn't particularly want to go home, but nor does she especially wish to remain in this malodorous, bewildering crush of whores and drunks and policemen. She is not afraid – indeed this girl scarcely knows what it is to be afraid – but she does not want to be stuck in a police post for the whole of Mardi Gras. If her father is to beat her for not coming home, she wants to have at least had some fun before the time comes. She'd only agreed to run the errand she was here for on the understanding that she could be in and out then off to Montparnasse to dance the galop or the chahut until she was wet with perspiration and set to faint.

"_Some chance of that now, Marie my girl!"_ she muses sourly, "_This rate you'll still be sitting here on Easter Sunday, like as not!"_

Still, she had been paid to run the errand – and Babet was a hard man to say no to.

Marie's eye is caught by the blond sergeant, Jolivet. He, at least in all this uproar, is pleasing to look at, and so she does. Truth be told, Marie spends more than a little time looking at this young sergeant de ville as he patrols her neighbourhood. She knows his Christian name – Etienne – and that he comes from Brittany. She likes his blond curls and his fresh complexion – as if he had just come up from the country yesterday – and most of all his laughing grace of manner which is not at all like that of a policeman. Were he in any other profession Marie would have spoken to him long ago, but her family are frequently the cause of trouble in the district and Etienne Jolivet had visited them more than once in a professional capacity. This makes Marie too embarrassed to speak.

Young Jolivet is somewhat embarrassed himself. He has been charged by Javert with the task of separating all the whores and hookers from the rest of the crowd, and is failing dismally. Whoever invented the expression 'like herding cats' as a measure of difficulty had clearly never tried herding prostitutes! He is as shamefaced as a sheepdog outwitted by a ewe, but henone-the-less perseveres, remonstrating with a seasoned old working girl who he has asked to 'remain in the far corner' three times now.

"When I say 'remain where you are' I do not mean 'walk off whenever you feel like it' – move again and I'll put you in cells"

The old whore sucks her teeth and looks shifty.

"Do you understand me, La Mère?" he adds, just to piss the old witch off.

"La Mère!" she shrieks, "You cheeky fucking filthy brat!" And the then spits in his face, a good healthy, phlegm gobbet the consistency of crème Anglaise.

"Excuse me?" mutters Jolivet impotently, "Really?"

The old whore smirks and purses her lips as if preparing a second volley.

"That's enough of that you dirty slut!" snaps a dark figure looming up behind the prostitute like the Devil. Well, like the Devil would if he were a middle aged man sporting whiskers and a top hat, with a small child cradled in one arm and a leaking fountain pen clutched gingerly in his other hand.

The figure is, of course, that of inspector Javert.

The whore has just time to shiver as if someone had walked over her grave before Javert shrugs the child more securely against his shoulder, sticks the still leaking pen between his teeth, and grabs her wrist in a vicelike grip which nearly lifts her from the ground.

Dragging the whore behind, him Javert walks off in the direction of the cells, making a savage nod at Jolivet over his shoulder which sprays ink like a blood splatter and translates as _"You! Come along with me!"_

Jolivet follows, noticing that the child is no longer crying, only snuffling a little. She has one arm wrapped tight around Javert's neck, like a baby monkey, and looks over his shoulder with saucer eyes as if to say "_Well this is certainly an unexpected position to be it!"_

Jolivet realises, with a queasily ashamed jolt, that much thought the lost child's wailing had been doing his head in, neither he nor anyone else had thought to pick her up.

Marie too watches their retreating backs (which from behind look rather like an unhappy family - her family! – after an abortive attempt at a day out). Marie also has an idea, and follows after them.


	4. Chapter 4

"Either take hold of this hussy, take the child or take some notes for the paperwork, Jolivet – can't you see I've only so many hands!"

As if to illustrate Javert's point, both the child and the prostitute begin to squirm restively, the woman coughing, spitting and swearing and the child surreptitiously wiping her nose on the turned up collar of Javert's redingote. All Jolivet can think is how little he wants to touch either of them. Instead he stares stupidly at the fountain pen which the inspector is still clutching in his left hand which has by now leaked a series of smuts and spatters down his trouser leg. Jolivet's mother had been a washer woman and he thinks about how little she would have enjoyed trying to get those stains out.

"In short order now Sergeant! As I pointed out – being a man rather than a squid - only so many hands!"

Unwilling and dazed, Jolivet reaches out to take hold of the prostitute's arm. Sensing weakness as an animal might, she pushes him away at just the moment Javert lets go of her and then swings her arm back, catching Jolivet unawares and sending him sprawling. The woman then spins on her heel and does her best to make her way into the throng of people by the main entrance of the police post.

Concealed round the corner, watching, Marie Magnon grimaces – feeling for poor Etienne even as she grudging admits how funny the whole performance is. She wishes they'd hurry up and cuff the horrid old bint – her need for a moment of Javert's time is greater, she is sure, than that of some raddled old scrubber. And, damn it all, she needs him to be in a good mood if he's going to let her pay bail on Mangedentelle without asking _too_ many awkward questions.

"Oh I've had just about enough!" roars Javert, setting down the child (who instantly begins to cry again) and rather pointedly throwing his pen at Jolivet. He makes a springing lunge for the absconding tart, like a greyhound let off the leash, and manages to catch hold of her wrist, but is then forced to pull up short so as not to barrel into the short, dark man who is unexpectedly holding the tart's other wrist.

"_You!_ What are you doing here?"

The new arrival quirks his moustache and flashes Javert a white toothed smile of joyful one-upmanship.

"Oh that is _nice_ Monsieur Javert, _real nice!_ I try and lend you a hand and all you can do is ask what I'm doing here without so much as a 'Good evening Leopold!" Well, since you ask, it seems I'm stopping your prisoner escaping"

"Alright then Leopold – ta very much. Now let go of said prisoner and sod off back to the Petite Rue Sainte Anne like a good fellow."

"Like I said Monsieur Javert, _real nice!_ You sure are a paragon of good etiquette!" The little man looked about himself mockingly and added, "Only thing is, I wanted a word with you – and you sure look like you can use some help here."

"Fuck off Leopold – and you can tell Ronquette and Coco-Lacour to fuck off also! Now, will you kindly let go of my prisoner?"

Leopold shrugs nonchalantly and lets go of the prostitute's wrist, "Sure thing Monsieur Javert – only I never thought I'd be having an argument about a woman with you, of all people!"

Javert purses his lips and sucks his teeth, then turns in the direction of the cells, trailing the hooker behind him.

Marie thinks about following him immediately only . . . she knows Leopold Daguerre, by repute at least, and any business he was in was a bad business, and the sort of business Monsieur Babet might wish to know about.

Leopold looks as if he is going to fire a last sarcasm at Javert's retreating back, but Jolivet, still sprawled on the floor, catches his eye and gives him a pleading look, "Please don't Monsieur Daguerre – You can see for yourself what sort of evening it is." So instead Leopold helps the young man up and claps him the back in a reassuring and avuncular fashion.

"No rest for we poor** sinners eh?"**

"No Monsieur Daguerre. Sorry about – "

"Oh don't apologise for _him!_ Is the Commissaire about"

"In his office - but strict instructions not to disturb"

"Well, I'll have a bash anyway – never mind J_avert_ sounding off about Ronquette and Coco, this is from the _Mec,_ this is serious and he'll have to listen whether he like it or not! Oh, and if you happen to see that skinny little _largue_ of Javert's tell her to get her bony behind to our office soonest – her Uncle Gégène wants a word with her"

_Javert's Largue_, Marie mused, would have to be code for something. No-one could imagine him having a _real _one! Still, no time to puzzle that out now and so, quietly, hitching up her skirts slightly to keep them clear of the mud and worse on the floor, Marie steals off down the corridor after the inspector.

Javert is by now well out of earshot, having taken off to cells at quite a lick, inwardly seething at Leopold Daguerre, Jolivet, the unfortunate hooker, the world at large but mostly at himself for being so provoked by them all. Consequently it takes him a little while to notice that he is being trailed. First off he notices a small, sobbing figure tagging right at the skirts of his coat. He looks about to see the lost child he unthinkingly dumped in the pursuit of bigger game. She's a forlorn little figure, that is certain, tearstained and plainly scared of the chaos whirling about her. She looks up at him, both seeking reassurance and silently berating him for abandoning her.

"Oh," says Javert, abashed and at a loss, "Oh"

The child tugs his coat and sniffs.

"Well then, come here!" he says gruffly, kneeling down and holding out his free hand, keeping tight hold of the 'working girl' who now stands perfectly still, watching, as if this is the most ridiculous thing she's ever witnessed.

"Don' like her" the child sniffs

"Well then, my flower, that makes two of us"

Little Magnon is listening to this exchange at a distance, just as she had listened to the one with Leopold, and she now decides that her moment has come.

Looking very meekly at the ground, she steps forward, "Monsieur L'inspecteur, might I have a moment of your time?"

"What?" he snaps, glaring at Marie from under heavy brows in such an unnerving manner that her feigned deference becomes real.

"The child – I know where she lives. I could take her home for you."

"Could you now?" and she can see relief and suspicion fight it out on his broad face.

"Oh yes! Her name is Magali. Her mother is Sara Lefebre – she's my neighbour."

This was all true; Sara Lefebre did indeed live in the same tenement block as Marie. A part time prostitute and part time maker of beaded flowers, she was scarcely old, or sensible or sober enough to be a mother – she was the sort of woman who would drink her eau de cologne if there was nothing else going, which was what Marie surmised had happened tonight.

"Kiki, come here!" she calls softly and slowly the child comes over and takes her hand.

"Sara Lefebre," Javert repeats slowly, slightly mollified, "And you, of course are . . . A Magnon – not Marthe though, but . . . Marie! Yes, this all figures. Off you go then my girl – and I'll have someone check on Sara Lefebre tomorrow."

And with that he turns his back on Marie and strides off down the corridor, muttering into his cravat

Marie coughs slightly and then calls, as loudly as she can while still appearing meek and deferential, "My good Monsieur Javert – "

He turns back to face her, looking anything but good, "Are you _still _here? Go home!"

"I, er, well you see I can't, Monsieur"

"Can't? How now?"

"You see, Monsieur Javert, I didn't come here to find Kiki. I mean, it's a lucky thing I did and all – "

"Come now! Spit it out! Why are you here then, little Magnon?"

Marie gulps and squeezes Kiki's hand, "I'm here to post bail for Louise Gaudrieau."

"For Mangedentelle! And who has given money to post bail for La Gaudrieau?"

"Her mother, Sir, who cannot do without her at home and who can't come her herself"

This was also true, Mangedentelle's mother was not a well women.

"And where has Mama Gaudrieau cobbled together the money for this, may I ask?"

Marie tips up her chin and looks Javert full in the face, "You may ask, Sir, but I don't know and answer for you!"

Javert takes two steps towards her and suddenly Marie is very much aware of how tall he is – she could easily fit under his arm, were Inspector Javert in any way the sort of man to take someone under his wing. His face twitches and he flashes his teeth in what could be a smile or a snarl and Marie begins to wonder whether she hasn't overstepped the mark, not just with her tentative wisecrack but in coming here at all. She's street-smart, but she's also hitherto stayed more or less on the right side of the law – she certainly isn't accustomed to pitting her wits against men like Javert.

However, when he speaks the Inspector's tone is unexpectedly level and – almost – amused, "Well now, that's either then most brazenly cheeky thing anyone has said to me today or the most straightforwardly honest – for the minute I cannot decide which"

Marie can feel herself relax – so his hasn't pissed him off (too much)

"So, about Louise – "

But before she can say another word they are interrupted by Sergeant Jolivet.

"Sir, I think you should come now"

"Why?" drawls Javert, quirking an eyebrow, "Something we're having trouble handling"

"For a start, Sir, Daguerre's gone in to see Commissaire Simonet – there's something about it that ain't _cushti _sir – "

"Sergeant, did you just say '_ain't cushti sir'_?

"Yes Sir. Why?"

"Because, Sergeant Etienne Madig Jolivet, you are Breton and therefore most people automatically assume you are dishonest, and you are handsome therefore most people automatically – and quite correctly – assume that you are stupid. You cannot afford to reinforce these two unfortunate impressions by speaking Romany and having appalling grammar! Anyway, did you want to tell me anything in addition to the movements of Leopold Daguerre?"

"Yes, Sir, that was the main thing! Minot's brought a whole load of trouble in a fiacre and was asking for you – he thinks things might kick off!"

Javert sighs and thrusts the old whore's arm out at Jolivet, "You take this down to cells and make sure it understands it's in for six months! You," he continues, glancing at Marie, "follow me and we'll see about bail for Louise Gaudrieau once I've looked into whatever disorder Jolivet was _pookering_ on about."

"_Pookering_, Sir?"

"Oh, splendid! He's got _me_ doing it now!"


End file.
